Biological anthropology

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Selection of Primate skulls.

Biological anthropology, or physical anthropology is a branch of anthropology that studies the development of our species, in the context of the other primates. This incorporates biocultural studies of human diversity through time and over space; the ancestry of the human species; and the comparative anatomy, behavior, history, and ecology of the other primates.

Physical anthropology emerged in the 18th century as the study of race.[1] The first prominent student of the subject was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach of Gottingen, who amassed a large collection of human skulls, and thus could claim empirical authority on the subject of human diversity. Physical anthropology became prominent in the debate over slavery in the 1830s and 1840s, with the scientific works of the British abolitionist James Cowles Prichard opposing those of the American polygenist Samuel George Morton. The end of slavery rendered the central issues largely trivial. In the latter part of the 19th century there emerged various national traditions. The French physical anthropologists, led by Paul Broca, focused on cranial anatomy and its minute variations. A German school, led by Rudolf Virchow, emphasized the mutability of human form, the influence of environment and disease upon the human body, and the lack of fit between race, nation, and culture. The Americans focused on the “pacified” aboriginal inhabitants of the continent, digging up graves and collecting bones as scientific objects, along with artifacts, languages and lifeways. This came to be known as the “four-field approach” in anthropology. Since the languages and lifeways involved mental or cultural data, this kind of anthropology came to distinguish itself by studying the “physical” data of human history and diversity. By mid-century, it was clear that there were other kinds of relevant scientific data that were not quite as physical as bones – such as genetic markers and primate behavior. The term “biological anthropology” came into use to incorporate these kinds of data as well. Today most practitioners use the terms synonymously. The relevant subdivision of the American Anthropological Association is called the Biological Anthropology Section, but the main professional organization is the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

After the Civil War, physical anthropology in the United States was an arcane medical specialty. The field of anthropology began to assume its modern academic structure with the appointment of Franz Boas in 1897 to Columbia University. Boas was hired as a physical anthropologist for his expertise in measuring schoolchildren, and collecting of Inuit skeletons. Boas would come to emphasize, from his German training, the mutability of the human form; and downplay race (a synonym for biology at the time) in favor of studying culture. Physical anthropology in the United States was developed by Ales Hrdlicka at the Smithsonian, and Earnest Hooton at Harvard. Hrdlicka had trained as a medical doctor, then studied physical antrhopology in France under Leonce Manouvrier before coming to the Smithsonian in 1902. Hooton obtained his PhD in Classics at the University of Wisconsin, then gravitated into anthropology while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford under R. R. Marett and the anatomist Arthur Keith. He was hired by Harvard in 1913, and trained the majority of physical anthropologists for the next several decades, beginning with Harry L. Shapiro and Carleton S. Coon.

As the leading American student of race in the 1930s, Hooton increasingly struggled to differentiate good American physical anthropology from bad German physical anthropology. [2] However, there was a great deal of continuity between the ideas of the American scientists and their German counterparts, such as Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, and Erwin Baur.[3]

After World War II, the field was reinvented by Hooton’s student Sherwood Washburn, who proclaimed a “new physical anthropology” in an influential 1951 paper. [4] To the postwar generation, physical anthropology transformed itself away from a focus on racial typology and towards the study of human microevolution; away from classification and towards evolutionary process and history. Led by Washburn, the field also began to expand to include paleoanthropology and primatology.[5]

Modern physical anthropology is consequently very methodologically diverse, and incorporates ideas, methods, and personnel from cognate fields, such as animal behavior, human genetics, and medical anatomy. Consequently, it often has difficulties meshing neatly with the rest of anthropology.

  1. ^ Marks, J. (1995) Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
  2. ^ Hooton, E. A. (1936) Plain statements about race. Science, 83:511-513.
  3. ^ Baur, E., Fischer, E., and Lenz, F. (1931) Human Heredity, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: Macmillan,
  4. ^ Washburn, S. L. (1951) The new physical anthropology. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, 13:298-304.
  5. ^ Haraway, D. (1988) Remodelling the human way of life: Sherwood Washburn and the New Physical Anthropology, 1950-1980, in: Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on biological anthropology. History of Anthropology, v. 5, edited by Stocking, G. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 206-259.


Contents

[edit] Branches

  • Primatology, the study of primates,
  • Molecular anthropology
  • Human adaptation, the study of human adaptive responses (physiological, developmental, and genetic) to environmental stress and variation (see biomedical anthropology, human biology).
  • Human biology, an interdisciplinary academic field of biology, biological anthropology, nutrition and medicine which focuses on international, population-level perspectives on health, and on human evolution, adaptation, and population genetics rather than individual diagnosis (see also biomedical anthropology ).
  • Anthropological Genetics
  • Human evolution including:
  • Neuroanthropology, the study of the evolution of the human brain, and of culture as a neurological adaptation of the species to its environment.

The study of human evolution often involves other specializations:

  • Human osteology, the study of skeletal material. Experts in osteology are able to apply their skills and knowledge to other areas:
    • Paleopathology, which studies the traces of disease and injury in human skeletons
    • Forensic anthropology, the analysis and identification of human remains in the service of coroners or medical examiners. This research often provides law enforcement with important evidence.

[edit] Renowned biological anthropologists

A head measuring instrument used by 19th century anthropologists to measure such parameters as cephalic index.


[edit] See Also

[edit] External links

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